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International Discharges Create Chaos and Inspire Creativity for Case Managers
Case managers and discharge planners in every state sometimes encounter the most challenging and frustrating of cases: the international discharge. Hospital Case Management asked Judith R. Sands, RN, MSL, BSN, CPHRM, CPHQ, CCM, ARM, a clinical consultant and author of Home Hospice Navigation: The Caregiver’s Guide, to answer a few questions about best practices in handling these unique care transition cases.
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Stroke Patient Navigator Prevents 30-Day Readmissions
A stroke nurse navigator team can prevent 30-day readmissions in stroke patients treated with thrombolysis, investigators found. A health system’s 30-day readmission rate was 13.6% before it began to use a stroke nurse navigator. The rate declined to 6.9%. Patients with the stroke nurse implementation were 67.6% less likely to be readmitted within 30 days compared to patients without the navigator.
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How Case Managers Can Help Victims of Trafficking
Case managers can learn skills and tactics for helping patients who have been trafficked. For example, investigators used an online training module to educate ED staff about human trafficking. Participants reported more confidence in identifying a possible human trafficking victim, noting they were more likely to screen patients for human trafficking.
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Screening and Documenting Cases of Human Trafficking Are Important, But Carry Risks
Human trafficking is a critical issue from a public health perspective. It has lasting psychological and physical effects on victims. There is too little information about how prevalent human trafficking is in the United States and how often the victims are seen in healthcare settings. Case managers, hospitals, and ambulatory providers could improve the data by documenting suspected or confirmed human trafficking cases via Z codes.
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Case Managers Could Use Z Codes More for Patient Care and QI
Case managers, providers, and health systems underuse ICD-10 Z codes eight years after they were introduced. These codes could provide a wealth of data to researchers and case management quality improvement projects. They still hold promise to be a way for providers to collect reimbursement for their work to help patients with their social determinants of health.
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New MRSA Compendium Revisits Contact Precautions
The bane of infection preventionists for more than half a century, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) shows few signs of ebbing. MRSA bloodstream infections surged during the first year of the pandemic, raising the question of whether this was because of disruptions and lapses in contact precautions.
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High-Mortality Enterovirus E-11 Infections in Europe
Infection preventionists should be aware echovirus 11 continues to cause infections in newborns in Europe after high-mortality cases first were reported in France.
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APIC Calls on Congress to Act on LTC Infections
In a strongly worded letter to Congress, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology said action must be taken to protect frail residents of nursing homes.
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HCV: The Cure Is Here, but Thousands Still Dying
About 2 million people in the United States are living with an infectious disease that has been curable for a decade but remains the leading cause of liver cancer and kills about 15,000 people annually: hepatitis C.
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Anti-Vaxxers, Misinformation Have Science Under Siege
The antivaccine movement and its attendant misinformation campaigns have science on the run at the cost of thousands of lives, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, warned recently at the 2023 conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.